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Comment by jdtang13 | Hacker News Reader

You're projecting and not seeing the big picture. Cheap, high-quality, and healthy food delivery would be beneficial to all Americans, especially the working class and especially fledgling restauranteurs. Just because you live a life of luxury doesn't mean that all services are luxuries.

Someone who is working oddjobs from 9am-9pm and still barely making next month's rent payment would benefit both from having extra time, and hopefully their health would not suffer if they were eating decent food.

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>"Cheap, high-quality, and healthy food delivery would be beneficial to all Americans, especially the working class..."

Yes cheap, high-quality and healthy food would be beneficial.

There is however nothing inherently healthy about using an app so you don't have to walk further than your front door.

Do you really believe the barrier to people eating healthy is that there isn't an app for them to do so without leaving their couch?

a) All change is incremental, it doesn't have to be revolutionary all at once to be meaningful

b) There is no question that these taxi/delivery apps have reduced costs. Not to mention his vision for the future of food delivery has hardly been implemented.

Apps are merely being tacked on to existing business models. This isn't the world Steve's getting excited about... it's the first baby steps.

But once businesses are designed from the beginning with apps, decentralized delivery, automation, etc in mind - just as he mentioned his sister in law did with her Vietnamese food service (by just getting a commercial kitchen with no retail front-end besides the app).

Nor has the true power of Uber-style delivery/driving apps been close to being reached yet. There is tons of potential for change still to be done, which will further reduce costs.

c) Yegge himself said this goes beyond food/transport

> Here’s the thing, though: Transport and food are only scratching the surface. Same-day food delivery can be generalized to same-day anything delivery, for instance. We’re going to see major disruptors happening yearly (if not faster) for many years to come. Payments and financial services are up next, and they’re a staggeringly huge opportunity.

>"Yegge himself said this goes beyond food/transport"

"Yegge" said it? OMG. The cult of Yegge! I am completely baffled by the swooning on HN over this guy. Wow, he worked at Google?! OMG. He wrote some blog entries 10 years ago?! OMG. What a giant!

That blogpost yesterday was so cringeworthy that he had to walk parts of it back today in another blog post, making him look even sillier. The content and claims were absurd and laughable. My first thought when I read it was "I bet this person has never been abroad before." I would ask anyone apologizing for him and his absurd claims would you be doing this for any other random person writing on medium.com whose name wasn't "Yegge."

Since watching the comedy "Silicon Valley" my perception of blog posts and histories in here has changed for the best.

This reminded me of the montage on season 1 where everybody talks about changing the world when presenting their apps/services...

I doubt its healthy for people to sit around all day while everything is delivered to them so they never have to go anywhere nor interact with anyone else socially in public.

Someone who is barely making rent isn't going to splurge on food delivery fees.

New things tend to be expensive, but when and if they become thoroughly ordinary, they can get cheaper. Why should food delivery be more expensive than food pickup? It's easy to see that you can deliver to somebody and somebody's neighbor for approximately the same cost as delivering to just somebody, and the cost of delivery vs. pickup for one unit is about the same. It's not obvious that this can't work; the best argument against it is that there have been many attempts in the past two decades and no successes at making deliveries much cheaper.

Because there is value in having delivery-you're essentially selling convenience. That comes with a cost

> It's easy to see that you can deliver to somebody and somebody's neighbor for approximately the same cost as delivering to just somebody,

And it's also easy to see if you have to deliver to one person on one side of the city and to another side right after it will be much more expensive. Not only do you have issues of food freshness (which means customer dissatisfaction) but also wear on a vehicle, insurance, gas, etc. To make up for it the cost of delivery will skyrocket-and thus people will not pay the premium.

Also-what about food locations? You're assuming that enough people in a very small radius will want to order the same food from the same place. That will almost never happen.

In the worst case, one person has to round trip between the source and the sink. But although the worst case is the same as the best case without a delivery service, the best case for a delivery service is better. QED.

There is wear on a vehicle, insurance, gas, either way but potentially less with the delivery service than with everyone doing their own fetches.

Yes, I'm assuming there is enough density for there to be actual economies of scale. Yes, it's true that delivery/takeaway sacrifices freshness compared to eating at the kitchen. Yes, it's reasonable to be skeptical about whether any company can achieve the required density and whether the theoretical efficiencies will overcome the friction of employment taxes. Etc., etc. However, pizza delivery has been a very affordable luxury for decades and mail delivery has been obviously cheaper than hand-delivering your mail for centuries. So, I don't buy your claim that delivery services are inherently niche luxuries.

> However, pizza delivery has been a very affordable luxury for decades and mail delivery has been obviously cheaper than hand-delivering your mail for centuries. So, I don't buy your claim that delivery services are inherently niche luxuries.

I didn't make that claim. I'm not arguing for or against the idea-but there are many problems with the model. It's not that easy-the costs don't make sense for the poor. There would be much greater impact for the poor to simply solve the food desert crisis than to have deliverable mcdonalds.

> There is wear on a vehicle, insurance, gas, either way but potentially less with the delivery service than with everyone doing their own fetches.

This is impossible to prove. At worst it's the same as the delivery model-if there is not enough density. And in places WITH enough density, there are food options within walking distance anyway. At best, people pick up food on the way to the store or back home. So there is very little loss to them as they are already driving and out.

> Yes, it's true that delivery/takeaway sacrifices freshness compared to eating at the kitchen.

That's not what I'm comparing it to. It's simply fresher for someone to pick up there own-the delivery driver has to make multiple stops first-so it's possible your food will be really cold/unfresh as opposed to picking it up yourself.

Unless they can also get a job delivering and raise their income 3-5x (like Yegge said in his first piece).

That doesn't make sense, if the goal is to minimize delivery costs eventually that means not paying a driver or paying a driver less.

we are already seeing this with uber. It is very difficult to make good money with Uber after factoring in all costs.

In Indonesia, the job they're leaving to start driving is not like a US job.

Big picture: once food delivery has really taken off and become "normal", the costs of producing that food can drop. In a dense urban setting, which do you think costs more: seating + servers + greeters + dish pit + front desk for payments, or contract delivery drivers with an app? If that turns a $15 restaurant meal into an $8 meal with $5 delivery, that ain't no bad thing.

Someone who is barely making rent could go pick it up from a kitchen only restaurant, drop off another order on the way home and get a meal that would be cheaper & healthier than buying it from a fast food place with full building costs.

Have you never met a waiter who spends all the day's income on drinks and a taxi ride that same night? People can be quite foolish.

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